Many conventional liquid and food product dispensing systems rely on a bag-in-box or other bag-based product storage and delivery design. With such systems, a flexible plastic bag is filled with product, such as beverages, liquid or semi liquid foods, liquid soaps or cleaners, or other similar products. This bag is often placed inside a cardboard box or other container to provide for additional protection and immobilization during transport. When the product is needed, the box is either removed and disposed of leaving only the bag, or a section of the bag is pulled through a hole in the box, and then the bag is placed within a dispenser unit. The bag often has a valve or a mounting point for a valve, and once pierced or otherwise opened, this valve may be hooked to a pump of some sort that, when actuated by a user, will draw the food product or liquid out of the bag and through a nozzle of the dispenser. Other bag-in-box systems may instead use a weight, spring mechanism, or other mechanical pressing mechanism to press down upon the bag to force product towards a valve. Bag and bag-in-box packaging is especially common in food related applications, because it allows for product to be packed, stored, and dispensed with minimal or no exposure to bacteria.
This decades old technology has numerous shortcomings, but is still popular due to factors such as low cost, familiarity, ease of disposal, and availability of compatible dispensing systems. One shortcoming is the need for some sort of active system or mechanical device for aiding in dispensing, whether it be a negative or positive displacement pump, a bag compressor or squeezer, a weighted press system, or other system. These systems are necessary because the product in a bag is frequently too viscous to flow from an opening in the bag under its own weight, and the valve on a bag is often mounted at a point above the bottom of the bag. A pump allows for even viscous product to be pulled from the bag, and the flexible bag may compress, shift and shrink during use, so valve position relative to remaining product is not critical as it will, to some extent, be forced into the value as the bag compresses. However even with such systems and in an ideal scenario, the amount of product extracted from a bag might typically be approximately 90% for active systems or 85% for weighted press systems, with the remainder being disposed of. In actual retail environments, due to work pressures and lack of training, bags of product are frequently switched as soon as a customer complains that dispensing is slow, meaning that 25% or more of the product may commonly be disposed of.
In addition to wasted product, ease of handling and installation of bag products is poor. Frequently, a flexible, tear-prone, liquid filled bag must be forced and arranged within a metal rectangular box, which may have sharp edges and may be heated, and is generally at a height that is above waist level on a retail counter top. An installer must avoid tearing the bag, ensure the bag and product are arranged to allow the door to close, avoid cutting or burning themselves on the heated unit's interior, and ensure that the bag's valve is near enough the dispensing nozzle and pump that it can be pushed or pulled into place and attached. Factor in that, in environments where these types of dispenses are commonly found (e.g., gas stations, small food marts, or other convenience stores), the person who must install a new bag is often the only employee on duty, meaning that frustrating and imperfect task must be performed while one or more customers wait. Considering the shortcomings of bag systems, it may be that whatever advantages these systems have as far as being inexpensive are lost as a result of unextracted and wasted product, installation time, and the purchase and maintenance of active pumping systems.
What is needed, therefore, is an improved system for storing and dispensing viscous liquids and other food product.